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founder of lingerie company Ultimo

Baroness Mone of Mayfair plus size cheap lingerie is tall and imposing – 5 ft 9½in, plus a few inches for her heels. She’s deeply tanned, wearing a skin-tight white sleeveless dress and is as delightfully big-bosomed as you would expect from the woman behind the Ultimo silicon-padded cleavage bra. And as sweet as pie.

You can see why Mone was told to tone down when she first arrived at the House of Lords. The sight of her dressed like this must have sent a few of those peers into cardiac arrest.

Perhaps David Cameron – who nominated her for the peerage – had a better sense of humour than we knew. Maybe letting this Glaswegian belle loose among the beasts was part of his cunning plan to cut down the Lords?

Read moreUltimo founder Michelle Mone appointed entrepreneurship tsar toWho knows, but Mone tells me she nearly didn’t take up his offer. “When David called to say, ‘How would you like to be a baroness for life,’ I said I didn’t think I could do it. It would take me out of my comfort zone.”

“I told him ‘I’m a businesswoman, an entrepreneur. I don’t have the education, the background or the qualifications to do this.”

And Cameron’s response? “Well, he said: ‘You will grow into it.’” She laughs: “He was right. I have grown into it. Looking back, what’s funny is that when I go around the world with Tony Robbins [the US motivational author] giving speeches, I tell people to do just that – get out of your comfort zone. Take risks.”

That was nearly two years ago, and now the 46-year-old from the city’s East End tenements, who left school at 15, loves being with her peers. “I have settled down, met so many different and interesting people who I never thought would be friends. I’ve learned about so many new things I never thought I would, like the recent energy bill. I am here for life now, and I don’t want to run out of the door any more.”

Today she is holding court plus size cheap lingerie in the cool of the Dorchester Suite at the Dorchester Hotel, on one of the hottest days of the year. She is running late for our lunch date and is tucking into a salad when we meet, so offers me a sandwich; only the kitchen needs 40 minutes to make one.